Dumarest 33 - Child of Earth

by Tubb, E. C.

  “He lied.” Shandaha sipped at his wine. “That is not how men die in the void.”

  “I know that now. I didn’t then.”

  Dumarest drew in his breath, remembering another time, another place when he had faced the frigid, mindnumbing vastness of the universe. A thing he had been forced to do; an experience he would never forget.

  Shandaha, watching him, said, “The others?”

  “Weren’t as bad but they were bored and I provided amusement. They teased me. I know now it was little more than a form of hazing. A ritual inflicted on most apprentices and novices. Cruel but basically harmless. But I was a boy, ignorant as you reminded me, helpless, insecure, terrified. No, it was not a happy time.”

  “And then?”

  “Most of what I did was to clean. The salon, cabins, the steward’s domain. Then I expanded into that of the handler, to the caskets in the hold, the hold itself. Zander was the engineer. One day he asked me to help him. He was busy with the generator and wanted it cleaned and checked for corrosion. Signs of failing insulation or extended wear. Basically it was routine maintenance. We talked as we worked, him telling me what to do and me doing it. Dorph, the steward„ came in while we were at it. He didn’t like me helping the engineer. There was an argument that grew ugly. The captain intervened. After that things weren’t as bad.”

  “You had made a friend.” Shandaha sipped more wine. “Did he teach you about engines?”

  Dumarest leaned back, remembering the talk of components, the physics governing the establishment of the Erhaft field, the need for care, the danger if the field should collapse. A peril he had known and remembered too well.

  “The engineer,” mused Shandaha. “The navigator too.”

  “Yes.”

  “The steward? No, he would not have been friendly. Yet what could he teach you aside from some basic first aid? Some medical techniques, perhaps. The use of a hypogun. The loan of a book on anatomy. How to attend to the needs of passengers. To prepare basic and simple meals. The handler? No. He could teach you even less.”

  “You seem to have a tendency to underrate the abilities of others,” said Dumarest. “As you did Chagal. Because he hesitated to kill does not make him weak. Any fool can kill. It takes skill, knowledge, care and understanding to keep the sick alive and restore them to health. It also takes skill to keep a ship happy, the passengers content. The handler was a mine of information.”

  “How could he be?”

  Dumarest extended his hand. “Touch me and learn!”

  “No. Tell me!”

  Another command and one to be obeyed but Dumarest took his time doing it. Deliberately he concentrated on the past, searching his memories, seeing again the wizened face of the handler, the gleam of humor in Jesso’s eyes.

  “Mostly the handler is in charge of the hold,” he explained. “He has to check the cargo, stack and restrain it and make sure the weight is evenly distributed. The caskets need regular maintenance and operating them is the handler’s responsibility. He also has to monitor those wanting to ride Low. He collects the passage money and does his best to make sure those wanting to travel are healthy enough to make it. No blame if they don’t but you can do without the clearing up.”

  “Routine work,” said Shandaha. “Anyone of average intelligence could handle it. Is that all he taught you?”

  “No.” Dumarest paused then added, “As I said it takes a special skill to keep a ship and passengers happy. Sometimes the steward has it or sometimes a specialist is hired. On the ship I was on, Jesso, the handler had it. He worked in the salon, at the table, entertaining the passengers. Gambling,” he explained. “Usually with cards. He was good at it.”

  “And he taught you?”

  “Yes.”

  “A man of unusual talents.”

  One who had been a friend. Dumarest saw his face, heard his voice, watched his hands as they moved over the table deftly manipulating the cards. Beginning with the basics, enjoying teaching a willing pupil, demonstrating the only safe way to cut a deck by drawing out the middle, setting it on the top, then cutting and stacking the cards.

  The beginning of grueling lessons to gain hard-learned skill and hard-won ability. To know how to recognize markings, top and bottom dealings, forcing and hiding. How to read other players. To tell the genuine from the false. To sense a bluff.

  To recognize a manipulator. A cheat. A sensitive. A coward.

  Dumarest blinked and stared at a familiar room, goblets holding the dregs of lambent wine, the decanter glowing with emerald luminescence. The remembered face dissolved into the mists of time. A personal memory divorced from Shandaha’s influence. Yet it had seemed as real as if he had stepped back in time, as the goblet seemed real, the table, the room, the face and figure of his host.

  “Interesting,” said Shandaha. “You seem to have had a most unusual education. One that has given you a variety of peculiar ideas.”

  “About peculiar situations? Peculiar people?” Dumarest reached for his goblet, lifted it, studied the wine it held then drank and set down the empty container. “People like you, perhaps? I think you read my mind and didn’t like what you found. I didn’t think you would. Did you also learn that, aside from recognizing cheats and liars, I was also taught how to make a man betray himself?” Pausing he added, “A man—or a thing.”

  “You go too far!”

  “How far is too far?” Dumarest was blunt. “This is your game, Shandaha. Your rules—if there are any rules at all. Are we in an arena? Are you waiting for my attack? Poised to parry and attack in turn? Is this what it’s all about?”

  “Chagal explained—”

  “The doctor is not himself. You claim only to want entertainment by experiencing my memories. If we are to play then let the game be fair. You know I cannot lie yet you insist that what I remember could not have happened. So was it all a dream? Is it still a dream? Is all this merely an illusion.”

  A question unanswered. Instead Shandaha said, “Oblige me, Earl, be so good as to pour us both more wine.” He waited until the goblets were full. “Why do you think your memories displease me?”

  “Perhaps not my memories. Perhaps simply the truth.”

  Dumarest waited until his host had sipped the wine, then lifted his goblet and drank and wondered if what he tasted was what the glass contained. “I once knew a woman who, when a young child, was sold to a religious order. She was fed and clothed and housed and was convinced she had lived a life of sublime luxury. The truth was the very reverse. The clothing was rags, the food rubbish, the shelter bleak. She had been conditioned, hypnotized, programmed to believe in a created illusion. Have I?”

  “I have not lied to you.”

  But if he had not lied he could still have hidden the truth. Dumarest remembered an incident in which to have told the bare truth would have cost him his life and to have lied the same. He had survived by treading the thin semantic path between truth and falsehood.

  He said, “What is a lie? Would you believe I have the ability to walk on water? I assure you that I speak the simple truth.”

  “Water,” said Shandaha. “You play a game, Earl. All can walk on water—if that water is ice. Your point?”

  “Apparent lies can be the truth. Truth made an apparent lie. As apparent logic can be manipulated to prove anything you want.”

  “If we syllogise,” agreed Shandaha. “To form a logical argument using three propositions; two premises and a conclusion that follows necessarily from them. As you have just demonstrated. Men can walk on ice. Ice is frozen water. Therefore men can walk on water. You wish to give another example?”

  “A cat has one tail more than ‘no cat’. No cat has nine tails. Therefore a cat has ten tails.” Dumarest added, “I assume you can recognize the flaw in that particular syllogism?”

  “A test, Earl?” Shandaha sipped at his wine. “The term ‘no cat’ has been used in different contexts to gain a false conclusion. Clarify the premises and the falsity is m
ade apparent. If we choose to syllogise it is essential that the two premises be accurate if the conclusion is to hold any value. I assume you know that. I also assume that you have a reason for raising the subject. I hardly think that you can have a strong interest in what, basically, is an intellectual game?”

  Dumarest said, “One game is much like another. The object is, simply, to win. How to win can be a variable.” He added, “I assume my memories no longer entertain you.”

  “No, Earl. Bore me a little, perhaps, as Chagal’s did. Childhood can be a barren time though yours, I admit, is stranger than most. Perhaps a little too strange. Memories can become distorted, laced with wishful thinking, dreams and illusions induced by hardship and deprivation. Later events could help to fashion a blend of truth and imagination born of reality and hallucination.”

  “You are saying?”

  “I offer you a suggestion. I have claimed that your experiences could not belong to your early years on this planet. You insist they did. But was it this planet at all? How can you be positive that you were born on Earth?”

  “I am certain of it.”

  “Think about it, Earl. We have spoken of syllogisms. Don’t fall into the common error of those who need to believe so strongly they deny the existence of negative proof.”

  “Such as?”

  “Earth is a harsh world,” said Shandaha. “You were born on a harsh world. Therefore you were born on Earth. Is that what gives you such conviction?”

  “I have memories.”

  “You were very young.”

  “Old enough to remember,” insisted Dumarest. He felt the familiar prickle of his skin that warned of the proximity of danger. Shandaha was too confident, too assured—a gambler certain he held the winning hand. But what game was he playing? “The moon. The terrain all scarred and torn by ancient wars. The scattered ruins of bygone ages. Damn it, man! I remember!”

  “Yes,” said Shandaha. “So you claim. Now tell me, Earl how far did you ever travel from your village?”

  “What?” Dumarest frowned, thinking, remembering. His host did not wait for an answer.

  “A young boy. Physically weak, barefoot and forced to cover rough terrain. Five miles out and the same back? A full day’s effort. You agree?”

  “So?”

  “In total, assuming your people stayed in the same area and that you took a different route every day, you would have covered an area of less than a hundred square miles. In that area you claim to have seen the scars of ancient wars and the scattered remains of bygone civilizations. You claim that Earth, the planet of your birth, is so scarred. Am I correct?”

  Dumarest said, stubbornly, “I know what I remember.”

  “That is the puzzle.” Shandaha lifted the decanter, filled the goblets, handed one to Dumarest. The act of a gracious winner. “The terrain all scarred and torn by ancient wars. The scattered ruins. How could you have seen them, Earl? Such things could only be seen from space and you didn’t even know what space was. So how could you describe what you had never seen?”

  He smiled over the rim of his goblet. The winner of a game that Dumarest, as yet, knew nothing about.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sleep was a misted honeycomb of tiers and shifting planes, of cells filled with glowing hues of amber and gold, silver and ruby, of chrome and dusty orange. Colors which held an enticing brilliance, fading to flare again in rainbows of novel configurations, to yield to the embracing softness of nacreous mists and tinted wreaths of drifting smoke.

  Places holding strange shapes and broken shards of elaborate constructions. Of veiled faces and bizarre landscapes. Of presences that rose to walk beside him to vanish as he turned to face them, to become shadows of colored mist, wisps of gossamer cloud.

  Dumarest stirred, knowing he was nude, resting on softness, draped by thin fabrics that held the subtle scent of springtime sweetness. The memory of Shandaha was strong as was the puzzle he had set, the elusive manipulation of words and logic that had threatened long-held convictions. There had been too many words and too much wine, if wine it had been, the lambent emerald seeming to dissolve in his throat to leave a glowing euphoria. One that had led to a glowing world of sleep-induced dreams populated by ghosts and haunted by the unknown.

  Somehow he must have left the chamber to strip and get into bed. Or had the bed come to him and had he ever been clothed at all? Questions without answers. Too many puzzles each presenting a disturbing mystery. It was time he found some solutions.

  He moved and felt a momentary nausea then was standing, facing an eerie scene of lowering night edged by the dull red glow of the western sky. One he had seen before when on Gath and he looked again at darkness illuminated by moving lanterns carried on rafts, held by tourists, attendants, accompanying guards. A wending line of men and women heading north across a sea-edged plateau towards the fabled mountains of a world holding a unique formation. A spectacle that intrigued the woman standing at his side.

  “It looks like a snake,” she said. “Or a centipede. Or an eltross from Vootan. They are composed of seven distinct types of creature united in a common symbiosis. Have you ever seen one?”

  The Lady Seena, spoiled ward of the Matriarch of Kund, slender, beautiful, wearing a fortune in gems and rich fabrics. Beside her, dressed in his traveler’s garb, Dumarest was a grey shadow.

  He made no comment, eyes searching the column, seeing things he had seen before and was seeing again by a trick of woken memory, the figment of a dream.

  “You did not answer me.”

  He was her companion. An attendant she regarded as a paid servant. She expected a response. Obediently he said, “No, my lady. I have never seen a eltross.”

  “You should. They have a certain charm.” A subject forgotten as she found a new interest.

  “That man!” Seena pointed to a figure stooped and struggling beneath a heavy burden. “What does he carry?”

  Dumarest told her. She stared in amazement. “A coffin holding the dead body of his wife? You can’t be serious.”

  “It is so, my lady.”

  “But why?”

  “He is probably very attached to her.” He added, dryly, “I understand that some men do feel like that about their wives. They cannot bear to be parted.”

  “Now I know that you are joking.” Seena was impatient. “It is hardly a subject for jest. Why is he carrying such a burden? Why did he bring her with him? What can he possibly hope to gain?”

  “That is the question, my lady.” Dumarest looked at the woman at his side, seeing again what he had seen so long ago. Knowing what was to come, what she would say. “I am not sure as to his reason but there is a legend on Earth that, on the very last day, a trumpet will sound and all the dead will rise to live again. Perhaps he hopes to hear the sound of that trumpet—or that his wife will hear it.”

  “But she is dead.”

  “So he claims.”

  “But if she is dead how could she hear?” She frowned her irritation. “You fail to make sense,” she complained. “I have heard of no such legend. And I have heard of no such world. Earth!” She laughed at the concept. “Do you really expect me to believe there is such a place?”

  “You should—it is very real.” He began walking so as to keep abreast of the column, pausing to allow her to catch up, continuing when she did. “I was born there. I grew up there. It is not a pleasant world. Most of it is desert, a savage, barren expanse in which little grows. It is scarred with old wounds and littered with the ruins of bygone ages and lost civilizations. But—”

  He broke off, senses reeling as the scene before him swirled and blended with mist. A time of déjà vu ending as soon as recognized. But the question remained.

  How had he known?

  How?

  He could not have known the details he had mentioned. He had been too young, too small, too weak to have traveled far. The moon, yes, that was plain for all to see, but the scars of old wars, the ruins, the vast expanse of wilderness?
As Shandaha had pointed out there was no way he could have seen them and yet he was certain they existed. Certain that all was as he had claimed. Convinced he knew the truth.

  Like ghosts thin voices whispered in his mind.

  “Earth? A strange name for a planet. Why not call it Sand or Loam or Dirt?”

  Laughter at the concept.

  “It has to be a legend. A fanciful myth. A world that does not exist.”

  More laughter at his insistence that it did.

  “Then why isn’t it listed in the Almanac? If it was real it would be registered. The coordinates would be known. They aren’t so it doesn’t.”

  Syllostic logic of the kind Shandaha had demonstrated. All planets were listed in the Almanac. If a world was not listed it didn’t exist. Earth was not listed so Earth did not exist. Proof according to the rules of the system used, but the initial premise was at fault. Change it a little to—‘all known planets are listed in the Almanac’—and the reasoning held no value. For if Earth was unknown it could not be listed, but it could still exist.

  Comfort of a kind and surely the existence of Earth could soon be no longer a matter of speculation. For he had found the planet. The legendary world of limitless wealth. He had managed to return, to get back home. The coordinates were no longer a secret. The Kaldari must have them and could have sold them on. They, or others, would use them driven by curiosity and greed.

  Given time more vessels must surely arrive.

  To be greeted as he had been? Blasted from space to be sent to crash in ruin on the surface of a hostile world? To be eliminated or made a prisoner for the amusement of some decadent being?

  Anger touched him and he fought the hampering mists of sleep, rearing to sit upright, clearing his mind, remembering, concentrating on familiar things. He was lost in a world of alien dimensions, lacking coordination, knowledge on which to plan and act. The pawn of a being of apparently superior power amusing himself with an elaborate game. Dumarest remembered the impression he had gained of a player radiating the smug confidence of one convinced of victory. Shandaha had won—but what? The doubt he had sown as to the veracity of youthful memory? A demonstration of skillfully applied logic to score a point? If so why? Shandaha would yield no answer, volunteer no explanation. He was too much in control. A situation that had to change if Dumarest was to gain some degree of independent action.